"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-- George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Payback

He's not even gone, and already Don Rumsfeld has his knives out for his soon-to-be former boss. First, he tells an interviewer that he was fired because of the "outcome of the election" even though Bush said the opposite. Then, he says that the phrase "'war on terror' is a problem for me." What's next? That Iraq was a mistake?

Wouldn't bet against it. Even though Rummy was always lumped in with Bush and Cheney as the central architects of this mess, the thing is that Rummy has always seemed a bit cagier than his cohorts. Cheney has always been about simply consolidating power and money for himself, and Bush, despite everyone's cynical assumptions, apparently actually believes much of what crawls out of his cakehole.

But Rummy disarms with his weird, perfunctory exclamations of "golly" and "goodness gracious", and his incredibly irritating habit of deflecting questions by asking himself more questions. He believes in nothing more than staying below the radar and shifting blame. So yeah, I'd say the over/under for some sort of tell-all "these assholes had no clue and I just did what I was told" self-serving memoir (or at least the announcement of plans for one) is next May.

I know it's an exercise in futility, but I hope at least of few of the remaining doofuses in the vaunted base have enough of a clue to follow the more recent Bush-Rumsfeld timeline. Bush practically had a press conference temper tantrum barely six months ago over keeping Rumsfeld, and even up to the final hours of campaign stops, kept reiterating his commitment to keeping Rumsfeld on board. And the day after the election, Rummy is tossed under the bus, and it's supposed to be for strategic reasons. Sure. And Bush is actually listening to what other people have to say, and not just trying to find excuses around it all.

A lot of people have been saying for a very long time that policy has been decided and run directly from the political arm of this administration, and the Rummy soap opera is a perfect example of that very syndrome.